(^478) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
developed along ethnic lines. Thus Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singa
pore are launching platforms to Thailand, where many Chinese have
taken Thai names, the better to fit in;* and to Malaysia, where the Chi
nese run the business show, although affirmative action and smart pol
itics urge them to adopt Malay partners.^1 " Thailand prides itself on
transcending differences, in part by strongly discouraging separate Chi
nese schooling. The Chinese smile politely, publicly approve, but often
supplement the Thai curriculum with school abroad. The community
balances "on an invisible see-saw between two or more identities."^8 In
economic matters, that means that the Chinese know who they are and
can work with one another.
In Malaysia ethnic differences are sharper, ressentiment keener.
Malaysia has known violence, race riots—nowhere near so bad as in In
donesia, but bad enough to make a point. So everyone plays down the
ethnic factor. In the meantime, on the island of Penang (northwest
coast), disk-drive capital of the world (over 40 percent of output), the
Chinese hold most of the executive and engineering positions.
"They're more like Americans," says one exec, "they live to work."^9
Members, then, of a rare aristocracy: most people work to live.
Riding the wave of economic growth, the worldwide network of
Chinese traders and entrepreneurs grows daily stronger. The success of
this diaspora would justify calling the so-called East and Southeast
Asian miracle an ethnic, that is, cultural triumph. In Indonesia, where
the Chinese form 4 percent of the population, they controlled in the
early 1900s seventeen of the twenty-five largest business groups. In
Thailand (10 percent Chinese), they number more than 90 percent of
the richest families and own the same proportion of commercial and
manufacturing assets. That they do not own just about everything is
due less to indigenous competition than to the claims made by politi
cal insiders, who have founded their own privileged enterprises or ex
pect a piece of whatever looks good.
Guesses about the overall output of Chinese-controlled businesses,
including China itself, but excluding Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia,
and the Philippines, speak of $2.5 trillion (10^12 ) in 1990, ahead of
Japan ($2.1 trillion), half as big as the United States, and growing
faster than both.^10 Some feel that Japan's moment of leadership is al-
- I am told, however, that the list of Thai names they draw on is such that informed
Thais can recognize the Chinese origin.
T The Thais feel that they have been more welcoming than the Malaysians of their
Chinese middleman minority—Kaplan, Ends of the Earth, p. 377.